A blog for Small Business Consultants and the vendors who serve them. It contains Opinions on business success, News in the SMB consulting space, and Information on what I'm up to.All material Copyright (c) 2006-2017 by Karl W. Palachuk unless otherwise noted.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

On my SMB Roadshow, I have a section where we talk about the tools you might use to deliver and manage "managed services" and "cloud services." Obviously, a remote monitoring tool is central to that.

I thought it would be useful to find out what YOU are using for remote monitoring and patch management. Please fill out this quick form. If you choose to enter your email, I'll make sure you get the final results.

Some fields are required, but not your email address.

Please fill out the form - and send a link to your I.T. friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, ASCII, etc. The more responses we get, the better!

Survey closes at end of day May 31st, 2017.

NOT sponsored by a vendor.Remember: I promise to never sell, loan, or rent your email address to anyone for any reason.
Thanks.
- Karl P.

Sessions Include:

This is a workshop - which means you will leave with some real-world goals, and the tools to implement them.

We will cover the strategies for creating a powerful and profitable cloud service offering for the small business market. My managed services businesses have been selling these bundled cloud services since 2008. In fact, it's one of the things that helped us thrive during the recession!

This all-day seminar is intended for any IT service provider who wants to sell very profitable cloud-based services to small businesses. The ideal end-user client is anyone with 1 to 20 users.

You can certainly sell these services to larger companies - and this seminar will give you all the tools and strategies to do that - but larger companies tend to have slightly different requirements.

The basic cloud bundle is intended to provide all the technology a small company needs, including email, storage, backup, anti-virus, spam filtering, patch management, and remote support. You will learn how to up-sell this to include telephones, security monitoring, and other services.

The overall goal is to help you create a combination that is reasonably price for the client and hugely profitable for you.

Bonus Membership

We have created an exclusive Facebook page, open only to people who attend this seminar. It is a place to discuss the strategies presented in the seminar, share their experiences, exchange documents, and so forth.

Once you register for any city, and pay your tuition, you will have access to the Facebook group.

Core Standard Operating Procedures for Small IT Providers

You're guaranteed to learn something that will make or save you the price of admission!

This course will cover the most important procedures you need to have in place to run an efficient and highly profitable Managed Services Business.

Whether you're a new "Computer Consultant" or an experienced Managed Service Provider, you need to create successful processes that will propel your company forward. Nothing is more critical to making profit than having the right processes and procedures in place!

When I take on new coaching clients, they have many of the same issues over and over again. And almost all of them boil down to SOPs - Standard Operating Procedures. Or the lack thereof.

Everyone knows you need SOPs. In fact you probably know which ones you need. But where do you start?

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been partnering with VSP® Individual Vision Plans to develop a great resource for people who are self-employed and looking to retire.

Most of the people who read my blogs and newsletters are self-employed. And many of you have heard me say, you have to make things happen – Nothing Happens by Itself. That’s certainly true of retirement planning.

If you Google “retirement for self-employed” you’ll get almost 20 million hits . . . all about money and saving. But there’s a lot more to retirement than just putting money in the bank. Yes, you need to address finances. But you also need to look at insurance, housing options, lifestyle, and even whether or not you’ll keep working for extra income on the side.

Like many of you, I’ve been self-employed for more than twenty years. And for a long time, I went without vision insurance. Then I found out about VSP Individual Vision Plans. I signed up last year and scheduled my first eye exam in more than five years. It was covered. Then I got new glasses. In all, I saved a few hundred dollars right away because I was covered by an Individual Vision Plan . It really makes frames, lenses, and exams affordable again!

That’s why I decided to partner with VSP to create this resource. VSP is working to become a true resource for the self-employed community.

While I make a living helping small business owners become more successful, I’m also a strong advocate of work-life balance. That means you have to look at more than finances. VSP paid me to create this resource so they could bring this information to a broader audience. I was happy to do it – and I think you’ll love the result.

One of the most important elements of being self-employed is creating our lifestyle as we work in our businesses. Being self-employed means we have a lot of flexibility. So looking at retirement includes looking at how our lifestyle will change, and making plans to move in that direction.

At the same time, we live in an era where more and more people are creating jobs for themselves online. It’s now easy to continue working past what some people consider to be re-tirement age. Luckily for us, that doesn’t mean flipping burgers when we’re 70. It basically means doing the same work we’ve been doing for twenty or thirty years, just on a different schedule.

In addition to covering the topics mentioned above, I also have lots of juicy resources in the white paper. These include the most important links you’ll need at the Social Security web site. I also call out some recommended “Action Steps” for you to take.

There is a "checkout" process, but you don't need to enter a credit card since the price is zero. Please note: zero-dollar orders have to processed manually, so please be patient. Laura works hard to get orders processed every day.

This famous checklist has been used by thousands of IT Professionals to begin their network audits, provide monthly maintenance of client computers, and generally keep client computer tuned up and working great. Originally published in 2005, this checklist has recently been revised to include cloud services and a lot more.

For notes on how to use the 68-Point Checklist in your sales process, check out the videos on the sales page:

Sunday, May 07, 2017

The Most Important Rules for Running a Successful Managed Service Business

This is an audio program recorded live. Includes my flyer with the 22 most important rules I've used to build and run my companies over the last 22 years.

When I first started creating systems and hiring employees, I started paying attention to the "rules" that make us successful. If you've heard me speak, you probably have some of them memorized. Like: Get prepaid for everything.

I created a poster of the most important rules and everyone in my companies has it posted on their bulletin board. We speak these phrases to each other. They are our mantras for success. They help everyone see the big picture and understand the overall culture of our company. They drive our decisions.

And here's the key to success: It's not ONE rule that matters. I can't tell you that rule #7 is worth $1,000/month or 9% of revenue. It doesn't work that way. ALL of the rules, taken together, create a massive interactive effect that drives our success.

This audio program presents an introduction to all 22 rules for success. It was recorded live and includes some audience questions. Delivered as a ZIP file with MP3, slides, and the flyer in .docx format so you can customize it for your company and the rules that drive your success.

We Donate with Every Sale!

Translate

Managed Services on Amazon

Hot Books for Managed Services

This four-volume set is the definitive guide to Managed Services. From the front office to the tech department, we cover it all. Every computer consultant, every managed service provider, every technical consulting company - every successful business - needs SOPs!

When you document your processes and procedures, you design a way for your company to have repeatable success. And as you fine-tune those processes and procedures, you become more successful, more efficient, and more profitable. The way you do everything is your brand.

How to Deliver Successful, Profitable Projects on Time with Your Small Business Clients

Small Business project management is simply not as complicated as project management in the enterprise. But small business projects have the same challenges as enterprise projects: They need to achieve their goals effectively, on time, and within budget.

They also face the same primary challenge – staying inside the scope of the project!

This great little book provides a simple process project planning and management process that is easy to learn and easy to teach to your employees, fellow technicians, and sub-contractors. You’ll learn to track any project, explain all the stages to clients and employees, and verify that everything is completed on time and under budget.

The authors show you a great technique for making sure that scope creep is a thing of the past! Make every project a successful and profitable project!

DNS and DHCP - On the Server or The Firewall? A few years ago, one of the major "truths" about our business changed. It had lo...

FTC Disclosure Statement

I make every attempt to honestly state what I believe and enjoy the freedom of posting whatever I feel like on this blog. This is a big complicated world and I have many interconnected personal and professional relationships.

I may in some way receive money or other benefits from any of the products, services, or companies mentioned in this blog as a direct or indirect result of my actions on and off this blog. Any experience mentioned here is just my experience and I have no knowledge about whether it represents a typical experience with any products, services, or companies mentioned.

Whenever it is possible to have both an honest and a misleading interpretation of my statements, please assume honesty. Thanks. - karlp